From Rice to Riches: A Personal Journey through a Changing China

Jan Hutcheon's From Rice to Riches: A Personal Journey through a Changing China is the result of her work as the Australian Broadcasting Cooperation's foreign correspondent in Beijing from 1995 to 2002. Hutcheon decides to go to China because of her Chinese blood and her desires to get in touch with her ancestry. Her Eurasian mother and Anglo-Celtic father were both born in Shanghai, while she herself was born and raised in Hong Kong.

After graduating from Australia's Charles Sturt University in 1981, Hutcheon worked for Hong Kong's Asia Television (ATV). In 1986, she covered the Queen's first visit to China after the London and Beijing regimes had reached agreement on the terms of Hong Kong's return to China. This event, in Hutcheon's words, "awakened a new curiosity in me. [China] was where my ancestors had come from and been drawn to, and the combination of authoritarian control, human diligence, the spectacular landscape but desperate poverty, made me want to learn much more".

Hutcheon has fair skin and brown hair and therefore is instantly recognizable as a foreigner in China. "Trying to slip quietly into small cities or towns without attracting attention was a constant challenge," she writes in From Rice to Riches.

Perhaps it is exactly this "foreignness" that enables Hutcheon to correctly interpret the Chinese people's angry response to the bombing of Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May 7, 1999, during the 78-day NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Hutcheon writes that such angry response appears to be a result of the "national humiliation" mindset that has been intentionally and repeatedly augmented by various political regimes in China from the second half of the 19th century throughout the 20th century. In her words: "The 'National Humiliation' is revisited whenever a serious diplomatic row erupts with China on one side against another strong power, usually the United States. It serves the leadership in times of crisis because bringing up the sense of humiliation stirs patriotism, which deflects anger and resentment away from the party."

Other passages in From Rice to Riches also reveal Hutcheon's awareness of her "foreignness". Her statement that "it was a constant source of surprise to my Chinese hosts that many Australians learn to use chopsticks from an early age" indicates her understanding of the common Chinese cultural assumption that "foreigners" cannot fully master Chinese eating manners. The guilt she felt for having drunk the turtle soup, which was made "from creatures I used to keep as pets", further enhances her sense of the cultural divide between the Chinese and the Australian/Westerners. Tired of being diplomatic, Hutcheon began debating with her host whether Australian leeks are bigger and sweeter than Chinese ones. In spite of her confidence in Australian agricultural products, she eventually had to let her Chinese host win in order not to be rude and hurt his national and cultural pride.

As an Australian of partial Chinese descent, Hutcheon can interpret the Chinese people's "national humiliation" mindset accurately, but she certainly does not possess this mindset in the same way that the Chinese people do. For instance, in a chapter titled "Shanghai Stir-fry", Hutcheon fondly writes that her favorite Chinese city is Shanghai. Because her parents were both born and raised in Shanghai during its heyday as Asia's financial center in the 1920s, Hutcheon devotes many pages to reminiscing her family's life in the city. She continues to explain that in Shanghai's International Settlements of the 1920s and 1930s, expatriates from twelve foreign nations were immune from Chinese law and could only be tried by their own courts. Yet, it is evident that Hutcheon neglects to mention the Chinese "National Humiliation" that has been so notoriously and permanently market by the alleged existence of the "Chinese and Dogs Not Admitted" sign erected in one of the city's municipal parks.

Some may suggest that Hutcheon intentionally neglects to mention the sense of degradation and humiliation collectively felt by the Chinese in her writing about Shanghai's colonized past because she has checked and verified the fact that the "Chinese and Dogs Not Admitted" sign did not exist at all. However, a more appropriate explanation about this negligence may be that Hutcheon simply does not consider the economic exploitation of Shanghai by Western imperialist powers in the same way that many Chinese do.

In other words, Hutcheon, an individual of Chinese descent who grew up in Hong Kong and Australia speaking English and receiving Western-styled education, does not have a "Chinese" identity that is based on the political, historical, social and cultural experiences commonly shared by those who were born and raised within the Chinese-speaking world. As a professional journalist and an "outsider", Hutcheon observes what "being Chinese" means in today's China, but clearly does not feel the need to relate to it. To borrow her use of food as a metaphor -- although she is fond of Chinese cuisine, to such a degree that each of the eleven chapters in From Rice to Riches is entitled with the name of a famous Chinese dish, Hutcheon's personal preference is and will always been Australian leeks.

Jane Hutcheon's From Rice to Riches: A Personal Journey through a Changing China was published by Pan Macmillan Australia in 2003.

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Copyright: Christine Sun, Taiwan.com.au Portal, 2005. All rigths are reserved.